PHILOSOPHY QUOTES IV
quotations about philosophy
Two half philosophers will probably never a whole metaphysician make.
GASTON BACHELARD
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire
The true philosopher is a brave spirit; dauntless to discover, and bold to declare the truth at all hazard. He feels the inner constraint of his messages, and, as a prophet to his day and generation, he must needs speak, though the whole world cry to him, silence.
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
The Problems of Philosophy
Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: or Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside
Everyone has his own philosophy that doesn't hold good for anybody else.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
Philosophy is no longer a field conducted entirely from the comfort of an armchair. Over the past decade, this notoriously abstract discipline has developed a branch of "experimental philosophy" that conducts its own scientific studies. Though such work continues to face resistance from conventional armchair philosophers, there's an increasing focus on using empirical studies in conjunction with philosophical thinking: One survey found that 62% of highly cited papers from 1960-1999 used a priori (purely reason-based) methods. From 2009 to 2013, just 12% of comparably cited papers used a priori thinking alone.
OLIVIA GOLDHILL
"Philosophers are using science and data points to test theories of morality", Quartz, March 28, 2016
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
The wisdom of philosophy is set in opposition to the common sense of mankind. The first pretends to demonstrate, a priori, that there can be no such thing as a material world; that sun, moon, stars, and earth, vegetable and animal bodies, are, and can be nothing else, but sensations in the mind, or images of those sensations in the memory and imagination; that, like pain and joy, they can have no existence when they are not thought of. The last can conceive no otherwise of this opinion, than as a kind of metaphysical lunacy, and concludes that too much learning is apt to make men mad; and that the man who seriously entertains this belief, though in other respects he may be a very good man, as a man may be who believes that he is made of glass; yet, surely he hath a soft place in his understanding, and hath been hurt by much thinking.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
The part of human philosophy which is rational is of all knowledges, to the most wits, the least delightful, and seemeth but a net of subtlety and spinosity. For as it was truly said, that knowledge is pabulum animi; so in the nature of men's appetite to this food most men are of the taste and stomach of the Israelites in the desert, that would fain have returned ad ollas carnium, and were weary of manna; which, though it were celestial, yet seemed less nutritive and comfortable. So generally men taste well knowledges that are drenched in flesh and blood, civil history, morality, policy, about the which men's affections, praises, fortunes do turn and are conversant. But this same lumen siccum doth parch and offend most men's watery and soft natures. But to speak truly of things as they are in worth, rational knowledges are the keys of all other arts, for as Aristotle saith aptly and elegantly, "That the hand is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms;" so these be truly said to be the art of arts. Neither do they only direct, but likewise confirm and strengthen; even as the habit of shooting doth not only enable to shoot a nearer shoot, but also to draw a stronger bow.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
When we affirm that philosophy begins with wonder, we are affirming in effect that sentiment is prior to reason.
RICHARD WEAVER
Ideas Have Consequences
Now, if wisdom is God, who made all things, as is attested by the divine authority and truth, then the philosopher is a lover of God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Philosophy, like science, consists of theories or insights arrived at as a result of systemic reflection or reasoning in regard to the data of experience. It involves, therefore, the analysis of experience and the synthesis of the results of analysis into a comprehensive or unitary conception. Philosophy seeks a totality and harmony of reasoned insight into the nature and meaning of all the principal aspects of reality.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Field of Philosophy
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
KARL MARX
Theses on Feuerbach
Philosophy and the neurosciences collaborate in a very fruitful manner.
KATHINKA EVERS
"Neuroscience and philosophy take the stand", Indiana Daily Student, April 10, 2016
A man becomes a philosopher by reason of a certain perplexity, from which he seeks to free himself.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The World As Will and Idea
If your divines are not philosophers, your philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to divine.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions
Only a philosopher's mind grows wings, since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine. A man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest, most perfect level of initiation, and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be. He stands outside human concerns and draws close to the divine; ordinary people think he is disturbed and rebuke him for this, unaware that he is possessed by god.
PLATO
Phaedrus
If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Why Still Philosophy?
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
JOHN KEATS
"Lamia"
Philosophy is a discipline open to anyone -- all you need is a bit of curiosity and an open mind.
BILL BREWER
"Philosophy: Understanding personal identity with Professor Bill Brewer", The Guardian, April 18, 2016